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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Fixed a Broken Google Reader with Google Takeout

Good news! I've finally fixed my pesky Google Reader problem. I couldn't unsubscribe to anything. It started being wonky months ago. I was subscribed to too many blogs and it didn't like that. Instead of receiving all new genealogy blog posts, I'd get some. There was no rhyme or reason on which posts I received. Two weeks later, I'd receive the rest of the posts.

I felt silly commenting on people's blogs two weeks after the fact, but the truth was that the posts were new to me.

At one point, I decided to unsubscribe to some blogs that were no longer updated. I thought that would appease the cranky Google Reader. I worked very hard on this for hours, manually visiting each blog feed and unsubscribing from those that hadn't been updated in over a year.

Google Reader was not impressed with my efforts and reinstated all the old subscriptions I worked hard to trim. Grrrr!

I looked online for help, but all I found were similar complaints.

I couldn't receive new blog posts. I couldn't trim my subscriptions. I gave up for a few weeks and didn't read any genealogy blogs. It was a sad time.

Then one Saturday, I tried again. I eliminated 200 subscriptions to stagnant blogs....only to have them back in my subscriptions on Sunday.

In January, I tried again. I searched the Internets for an answer or a fix. I was starting to consider deleting everyone and starting over with a new account. Then while searching through everyone else's Google Reader complaints, I found a solution.

One person discussed how she made her unsubscribing changes, then exported the data via Google Takeout. She then imported the correct subscriptions and her Google reader reset.

So I spent another weekend eliminating a bazillion stagnant blog subscriptions. Again. Then I exported the ones I wanted to keep to Google Takeout. That exercise alone fixed my problem. I did not have to import anything.

Now that my Google Reader is behaving, I hope to receive blog updates in a timely manner. I can start commenting again! I'm also going to subscribe to a bunch of new genealogy blogs because my Google Reader is not the boss of me.

I'm glad you got it fixed, too. I'm guessing you wouldn't have visited my blog if that hadn't happened, and I appreciated your comment this morning.

As an amateur genealogist for the past 24 years, I love the sub-title of your blog: "If you think family history is boring, then you're doing it wrong." It certainly isn't boring to me, but most of my family members' eyes glaze over as soon as I say the g-word. I keep hoping the bug will bite some of them one day.

Thanks for this heads-up. I pick up my Google Reader feed in Flipboard on my iPad, and had spotted some posts coming through for "unsubscribed" blogs only a few minutes before I got to this blogpost of yours. Now I know I'm not going crazy, and more importantly, how to fix it!